John Travolta as John Gotti, with wife Kelly Preston as the mobster's wife, VictoriaAlamy

With its twists and turns and colorful cast of characters — celebrities and con men among them — the making of “Gotti” is more intriguing than the John Travolta film itself.

Scheduled to officially open Friday, “Gotti” initially got going in 2010, when producer Marc Fiore secured the rights to John “Junior” Gotti’s story about life with his father, the godfather of the Gambino crime family.

John Gotti (right) arrives at court in 1990.AP

Fiore had only one movie credit to his name — “One, Two, Many,” a 2008 comedy written by and starring Howard Stern’s former sidekick, “Stuttering John” Melendez — before announcing he’d produce what was tentatively titled “Gotti: In the Shadow of My Father.”

Over the next eight years, the movie morphed into a biopic of the Dapper Don himself, who died in prison in 2002. It would have three different titles, and go through four directors while amassing 44 producers and one arrest, for investor fraud.

Here are some highlights and lows in the tortured history behind “Gotti.”

January 2011: John “Junior” Gotti and John Travolta, set to play Gotti Sr., dine at the LA restaurant Amici with Fiore and his director, Nick Cassavetes. Paparazzi catch Junior and Travolta exchanging mob-style hugs and cheek kisses as they exit.

April 2011: Lindsay Lohan attends a press conference in Midtown where Junior, Travolta, Cassavetes and Fiore announce that Fiore Films’ “Gotti: Three Generations” will start filming in New York in October. Lohan, sporting long blond hair extensions, is “in talks” to play Gotti’s daughter, Victoria, while Joe Pesci is cast as his stocky deputy, Angelo Ruggiero. Junior tells the crowd: “John Gotti, my father, was an icon. He was a killer, he was a gangster — but he was a man’s man . . . He paid for every sin that he may, or may not, have committed.”

AP

June 2011: “Inside Edition” reports that Fiore Films head Marc Fiore pleaded guilty to securities fraud in 2002, when he was known as Marco Fiore. He served four years at the Allenwood (Pa.) State Penitentiary for managing a pump-and-dump boiler room that scammed millions from investors. In “Born to Steal: When the Mafia Hit Wall Street,” author Gary Weiss calls Fiore “a massively corrupt individual who was in charge of other corrupt individuals.”

July 2011: Pesci, who claims he gained 30 pounds to play Ruggiero, sues Fiore for $3 million, claiming Fiore reneged and offered him a smaller role at a $2 million salary cut. TMZ quotes Fiore calling Pesci “a has-been who is desperately seeking attention by trying to force himself into this movie.” Fiore tells TheWrap: “I am extremely fond of Joe, think he is a terrific actor and very much want him to be in the Gotti movie.” The suit is eventually settled out of court.

September 2011: Travolta goes to Howard Beach, Queens, to meet with the elder Victoria Gotti, the godfather’s widow, who’ll be played by Travolta’s wife, Kelly Preston. The actor is joined by Junior, Fiore and mob lawyer Charles Carnesi. Cassavetes has been replaced by Oscar-winning director Barry Levinson; James Toback is now writing the screenplay, and Al Pacino is set to play Gambino family member Neil Dellacroce.

October 2011: Roger Friedman’s Showbiz411.com reports that Fiore hasn’t been able to raise the money needed to start production. “The movie is going forward,” insists the film’s spokesman, who also represents Lohan.

Travolta on the set of “Gotti” in Bath Beach, BrooklynPaul Martinka

May 2013:The Hollywood Reporter says “Gotti” is back on. Salvatore Carpanzano, who reportedly met Fiore at the Pennsylvania prison, is said to be bringing in foreign money, and Fay Devlin, an Irish immigrant who made a fortune in construction, is investing. Meanwhile, Levinson, Toback, Lohan and Pacino are gone. Joe Johnston’s now directing, and Fiore’s back to Leo Rossi’s original script.

November 2014: The feds arrest Carpanzano on fraud charges. The Scarsdale, NY, resident is accused of conning Devlin out of $1.8 million by pretending to have foreign investments and having Devlin put money into an escrow account Carpanzano controlled, the New York Times reported. Devlin’s lawyer says his client will no longer invest in movies. (Carpanzano is currently in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and has yet to go on trial.)

February 2016: Kevin Connolly, who played Eric on “Entourage,” is set to direct. Filming is pushed back yet again, to March. Jerry Capeci of GanglandNews.com tells me: “I’ll believe it when I see it on the screen.”

July 2016: Filming begins in Cincinnati (made to look like NYC), to take advantage of Ohio tax breaks, and ends seven months later in New York.

Karl Larsen/Coleman-Rayner

November 2017: Marty Ingels’ longtime publicist, Ed Lozzi, claims Fiore owes the late actor/agent’s estate $35,000 for setting up the original meeting with Travolta. I reach out to Fiore, who says, “Don’t ever call me again.”

December 2017: Two weeks before “Gotti” is set to open, Lionsgate, its distributor, sells it back to the producers. Travolta responds by saying the movie deserves a bigger audience than Lionsgate planned to give it. Edward Walson, producer of several Woody Allen movies, joins the “Gotti” team and seeks a new distributor for what he calls “a big movie-star film with a multi-dimensional, iconic character.”

May 2018: “Gotti,” with music by Pitbull, premieres at the Cannes Film Festival. The Hollywood Reporter calls it “pretty terrible: poorly written, devoid of tension, ridiculous in spots and just plain dull in others.” Travolta opens an Instagram account and, within 24 hours, garners half a million followers.